Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the National Bank Financial Group Third Quarter 2011 Results Conference Call. I’d now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Helene Baril, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ms. Baril.

Helene Baril - Senior Director, IR: Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for joining National Bank Third Quarter 2011 Results Conference Call. In a few moments, Louis Vachon, President and CEO, will start the call with his opening remarks, then Patricia Curadeau-Grou, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer will present the Bank’s overall performance as well as the risk and capital management review.

Following our comments, Jean Dagenais, Senior Vice President, Finance, Taxation and Investor Relations, will present results of the three main business segments. At the end of the formal presentation, we will take your questions. Please note that Rejean Levesque, Executive Vice President, P&C Banking; Luc Paiement, Executive Vice President, Wealth Management; Ricardo Pascoe, Executive Vice President, Financial Markets; and Bill Bonnell, Chief Risk Officer will also be on hand to answer your question.

I’d like to remind you that all documents referred to in today’s conference call can be found on our website at nbc.ca in the Investor Relation Section. In addition, please note that the caution regarding forward-looking statements shown on Slide 2 applies to our presentation and comments.

With that over to you, Mr. Vachon.

Louis Vachon - President and CEO: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. In the third quarter of 2011, the Bank delivered very good results despite the current uncertainties affecting the global economic environment. Reported net earnings amounted to $312 million or $1.84 on a per share basis, up 18% from the same period last year. Adjusted net earnings reached $293 million or $1.72 on a per share basis, representing an increase of 10% from Q3 2010. Credit quality remained solid with PCLs reaching $26 million or 16 basis points. Return on equity was strong at 17.5%.

The Tier 1 ratio under Basel II and the common equity Tier 1 ratio under Basel III were at 13.9% and 8% respectively. For 2012, our base case scenario is forecasting a softer domestic environment, with real GDP growth ranging from 1% to 2%. We do not expect a recession. Therefore, we currently plan no change in our risk appetite or capital management strategies.

Nevertheless, ongoing instability at the global level has a potential to place further pressure on the Canadian economy. We are ready to implement such adjustments, if necessary. Moreover, expense management will remain a priority.

With strong capital, diversified funding sources, and sound credit portfolio we continue to be well positioned to pursue our strategy. We intend to invest in the Bank’s franchise through the 'One Client, One Bank' program and seize growth opportunities in Canada.

In terms of opportunities, we are observing two major trends in Canada. First, some foreign financial institutions are exiting segments of the Canadian financial service industry. In the last few months, we were able to benefit from this with the acquisition of three credit retail portfolios from non-domestic players.

Transcript Call Date 08/25/2011

Operator: Steve Theriault, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Stephen Theriault - Bank of America Merrill Lynch: If I could start with a couple of questions for Ricardo please. So, your trading revenues have been pretty resilient, and until this quarter haven’t come in below, I think, somewhere in $130 million to $150 million range except in Q3 of last year, which was an extremely challenging quarter given the liquidity issues in Europe. So, a couple of things, I’m wondering if the softness in this quarter’s results is at all related to the restructuring announced last December or is it entirely due to the difficult environment. Secondly, Ricardo, I was hoping you could give us an update on your outlook for trading as we sit one month into Q4, is the number we’re getting here in Q3 in anyway approaching a floor of what you might expect or is there realistically additional downside, should the market remain as tough as it has in the last few weeks?

Ricardo Pascoe - Co-President and Co-CEO, National Bank Financial and EVP, Financial Markets: Sure, Steve, thanks. I guess, the first part of your question, the drop in trading revenue sequentially was mostly driven by two factors – one is lower trading activity of our clients, particularly in ETFs, where we're very active market makers, and the other one is the lower prop trading revenues and ALM revenues. That’s what really drove the drop – the fall in prop trading – sorry, in our trading revenues. The restructuring, in fact, the impact on trading revenues was positive, because we have greatly reduced our facilitation ratios since the restructuring. So in fact that’s positive. We did see as well, as you know reduction in commissions sequentially. When I look at what’s happened out with our competitors, particularly the independents that have reported on a different sequence than us, but it looks like our drop in commissions was pretty much in line with lower volumes. Again, we may have dropped commissions a little bit more because of the restructuring since we had a drop in – or some holes in coverage, but again more than offset by lower facilitation losses. Now with the Wellington West acquisition, that’s really changing. It's early days, it’s only been a month, but again launching on 60 names, 50 new names from us has really increased our product that we can offer clients and our activities are higher. The volatility in the last few weeks actually was very good to our commission revenues. There was a quite a bit of client activity back in the markets. As far as the range, it’s very hard to predict. We’re only very early in the quarter. I can’t say that we reduced risk significantly last quarter. So the very high volatility in the early weeks of August didn't affect us as much, but it’s still pretty early days in the quarter.

Stephen Theriault - Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Just with respect to prop trading, I think last quarter it was flat, this quarter I think in the notes it said a slight negative. So, was it a bit of a loss in the prop trading group this quarter?

Ricardo Pascoe - Co-President and Co-CEO, National Bank Financial and EVP, Financial Markets: Yeah, we had negative revenues of $12 million in prop trading.

Stephen Theriault - Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Then, you mentioned VaR, VaR was unchanged in the quarter. I think that’s an average number. Given the spike in VIX and fixed income volatility, has the VaR gotten – like when we look at the VaR next quarter, is that likely to increase or to your comments taking some risk off the table will that remain relatively stable? I guess, if there has been a spike, has that caused you to pull back meaningfully anywhere that you’d highlight?